


won't know until we get there

by andawaywego



Category: American Horror Story: Apocalypse, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Cordelia being masochistic, F/F, I don't think Kyle speaks even once, Kinda Fluffy, Oops, Residual Angst, very mild sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-26 04:18:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16674373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego
Summary: "She wants to tell Misty how much she missed her when she was gone. She wants to tell her everything, all those things she’s been afraid of saying aloud. But it’s quiet now and Misty’s breath is coming out in puffs that ruffle through her hair and she never thought she’d have this but she does.She does."[or: Misty's first year back, according to Cordelia]





	won't know until we get there

**Author's Note:**

> long-time listener, first-time caller. i'm not supposed to be writing anymore fanfic bc i made a vow but i don't think my 2014-self would ever forgive me if i didn't do something after that finale. Misty is alive y'all. holy shit. i keep pinching myself. 
> 
> so, whatever, this'll be my last. hopefully. probably.
> 
> also, fair warning: i did my best with what i could take from this season (i have a lot of questions, Mr. Murphy) so you might need to squint, but it's pretty canon-compliant (i hope).
> 
> i don't think anyone has done a snapshot-year-thing fic for these two, and that's a damn shame. so here's one that's 21k, has mild angst, some fluff, eventual romance, and slightly ooc characters. enjoy, friends.

 ...

“ _Each time, you happen to me all over again.”_

..

_November._

.

 

The silence in the house has less to do with peace and more to do with the late hour and the fact that all of the girls presently in it, save for her, are tucked away in their beds all the way up the stairs. They're good, for the most part, save for the ones who don't yet fully understand their own abilities. It was barely two months ago that two of them (each of them just rounding the crest of thirteen-years-old) got into a silly argument over the remaining slice of Zoe's birthday cake. The fight ended in burnt drapes and scorch marks from floor to ceiling in the kitchen, right over where Cordelia is currently sitting.

The kinds of silly things you think are worth fighting over when you’re that age. She doesn’t understand it, to be honest. She’d never been that way when she was that age.

It had taken less than ten second for her to fix it, of course -- nothing more than a simple wave of her hand -- but it’s the principle of the thing, really. Zoe has been working with the two of them on self-control since then, but God save them all if the lessons shouldn’t stick.

Cordelia leans her elbow onto the tabletop, resting her chin in her hand and blinking in surprise when some of the steam from her mug of tea wafts up and into her eyes. It’s been a year, and entire year, and she’s still getting used to having them again. Here she’d spent thirty years with them before that, and a month or so without sight and there are still moments when she forgets -- when she wakes up in the morning to her bedroom filled with light and can hardly believe it.

There are a lot of things to get used to these days. Life, it would seem, just keeps on changing. For the better, she _knows_. But changing all the same. So many new things to get used to.

This, for example: the sound of footsteps on the back porch and the back door opening up at one o’clock in the morning.

Cordelia jumps in surprise, her hand clutching to her chest. She’s the Supreme and she still jumps at sudden noises like a child. Fiona would be so proud.

“Misty?” she says, voice pitched low in the low light of the kitchen.

Really, she doesn’t need to ask. There’s no one else it could be. She can see her perfectly well, despite there only being one lamp on in the room and the darkness spreading out behind Misty through the open door.

She’s barefoot. Cordelia can see that much and the bottom of her long skirt is wet.

“Didn’ think anyone’d be up,” Misty offers simply. “Sorry.” She gives Cordelia a sheepish smile and closes the back door behind herself before crossing the room to the kitchen sink and flipping on the faucet to wash her hands.

Really, she shouldn’t be up. Lights out for the girls is a strict ten o’clock, even on weekends, and curfew is no later than eight o’clock on nights they’re allowed to go out in the first place. Usually, Cordelia is in her room by midnight at the latest, but it’s been getting harder and harder to sleep these days. Too many thoughts plague her mind the moment the lights turn off, the moment she’s left alone with nothing besides her own thoughts.

The last thing she’d wanted to do tonight was lie in her bed alone, torturing herself into an eventual, exhausted sleep. So she’d come downstairs, made herself some chamomile, and tried not to wonder at where Misty had disappeared to before the sun. And now here Misty is, leaving pale, wet footprints across the kitchen floorboards.

If this were anyone else -- Zoe or Queenie or anyone but  _Misty_ \-- the entire moment would be different. She's sure of it. Everything about it would change. 

“Where are your shoes?” Cordelia asks, cupping her hands around her mug and taking a careful sip. The tea burns the tip of her tongue.

A silly question. The first time she’d met Misty, over a year ago, she’d been barefoot, though she’d known it only when Madison made some scathing comment or another, having been blind at the time. Even when she’d had her eyesight, the only shoes she’d ever seen Misty wear were a pair of worn, heeled boots and that was only if she were going anywhere other than the Academy. She’d asked her once, _before,_ and the answer she’d gotten had something to do with feeling ‘closer to the earth’ with her feet in the dirt, no barriers between her skin and the ground.

There was no real science behind such a feeling (no _magic_ either, as far as she knows) but Cordelia learned early on not to question the method of someone so intrinsically gifted, the way Misty is. She’s unreal, so attuned with her surroundings. Not just the plants, but everything. Like every living thing gives off some sort of frequency, speaks some sort of language, and only Misty can understand what they’re saying.

Misty turns her head, hands covered in white, foamy suds and grins. “Dryin’ outside. Hosed ‘em down. The mud was stickin' to 'em somethin' awful,” she answers. “Figured you’d get pretty mad if I tracked mud in here.”

She says it simply, as though tracking mud in the house is an everyday occurrence for her. Like she’s done it before and gotten scolded, when, in reality, she’s been back less than two weeks and they hadn’t exactly had the proper time to settle into everyday life when she’d last been alive.

Cordelia isn’t sure what she’s allowed to say to that. “Oh. Well, thank you.”

That seems to do it.

She shrugs. “S’only fair to clean up my own mess.”

Cordelia watches her from across the room, the way she rinses each soap sud carefully from her fingers before turning off the water. There’s a dishrag draped across the drying rack on the counter and she pats her hands with it carefully before dropping it back to the counter in a heap.

“Where were you today?”

It comes out a good deal needier than she means it too. She’s been trying carefully not to sound desperate since Misty walked through that front door again, but it’s been hard to keep her eyes off of her. There’s still a lingering fear there, that Misty is going to disappear the next time Cordelia turns her back and she can’t help the hot spike of dread that occasionally jumps in her veins when Misty is anywhere but at her side. Of course, Misty needs to heal and Misty needs to rest and she deserves time to herself where she can do those things and her shack is safe and secluded and right where she left it. Cordelia had taken careful care of it over her absence.

 _Just in case,_ she’d told herself -- told Zoe and Queenie when they’d give her pitying looks after she returned to the Academy each time after checking on it. And here she is now, grateful for all those afternoons she’d spent wiping down Misty’s vinyls and dusting her shelves, straightening the unused sheets on her bed and rearranging the furniture.

“Oh, you know,” Misty answers with a nonchalant shrug as she leans back against the counter. “Here and there.”

That’s all the answer she gives.

Cordelia bobs her head, trying to pretend it doesn’t bother her, curiosity plaguing her mind. Misty had already been gone by the time Cordelia had come down to breakfast being served to the girls before classes. This is the first time that she’s seeing her since yesterday evening, during dinner. She tries to hide her bothered expression behind another well-timed sip of tea.

“Been meaning to ask,” Misty continues after a moment and Cordelia lifts her eyes again to look at her, “you wouldn’t happen to know the person responsible for adding plumbing to my shack, would you?”

There’s a smirk on her face. Clearly, she already knows the answer.

Cordelia hums, pretending to be considering her answer. “I’ll have to ask around,” she says. “Some good Samaritan, I suppose.”

“Well, if you find ‘em, let me know so I can give my thanks. Certainly better than squattin’ in the woods.”

At Cordelia’s answering expression, Misty lets out a caught, surprised laugh that rings in Cordelia’s ears for a long moment.

“Just wanted to see the look on your face, Miss Cordelia.”

“You’re ridiculous,” Cordelia admonishes, but she’s smiling. She can feel the ache in her cheeks from how bright.

They fall silent. The house creaks around them in the night breeze and Misty crosses her arms, the floorboards under her feet squeaking from the movement. Cordelia blows a long stream of cool air across the surface of her tea, though it’s been a reasonable temperature for at least a minute already. She doesn’t take another sip from it, preferring, instead, to just watch Misty carefully from across the room as she holds the warm drink between her chilled palms.

Thirteen days. It’s been thirteen days since Misty walked through that front door and she’s trying to get used to seeing her again, to having her around. There’s an urn in the back of her closet, filled with the dust of the body Misty used to inhabit, and she remembers hiding it away months ago because she could feel its presence burning her, keeping her from sleeping, when it had been out in the open.

“You keep doing that.”

Cordelia glances up to find Misty’s eyes on her, soft and linger. Curious. “Doing what?” she asks.

“Looking at me like that.”

She doesn’t define it any further, but Cordelia knows precisely what she means in any case. She keeps looking at her like she’s expecting her to disappear -- like she’s going to wake up at any moment to find that it had all been a dream in the first place. Like she is struck in awe at having her around again, because she is. Part of her feels guilty for it, for pushing her own emotions onto Misty when there are other things that Misty should be focusing on right now, that need her attention. But she doesn’t know how to stop.

“Is there another way you want me to look at you?” she asks, surprised to hear how strong her voice sounds, how sure.

Even Misty seems taken aback. She’s quiet for a long moment, like she’s considering her options, biting her lip as she mulls the whole thing over. And then she shakes her head. Just once.

“No,” she says.

“Okay.”

It’s a loaded conversation. Cordelia has spent enough years on this Earth to know that they’re talking about two things at once here, hidden under the guise of simple phrases and words and avoiding one another’s eyes. But it’s a nice night and this -- whatever this _thing_ is--

It’s not new. Cordelia knows that it had been there before Misty--

Just _before._

There’d been soft brushes of Misty’s hand to the small of her back and looks that lingered a beat too long and Cordelia remembers not being able to _feel_ her in the house when she’d gone missing -- thanks to Madison. And then she’d been back and _safe,_ even if Cordelia couldn’t see her. But they’d been under attack and there hadn’t been time and she’d told herself that, whatever it was, they’d get around to figuring it out when they were safe.

Together.

And then they’d never even gotten the chance.

But Misty is here now. She’s here and she’s just as beautiful as Cordelia remembers and for the first time since she came knocking on their door, they have _time._ They have all the time in the world.

If Cordelia could only let herself _try_.

“D’ya think Queenie’ll mind having a roommate again for the night?”

Cordelia almost wants to say _yes,_ even if it’s not strictly true. Queenie had been more than excited to have Misty alive again, even if it meant being forced to share her bedroom on nights when Misty _didn’t_ stay at her shack. The clothes she’d left behind when she’d gone have been hung in Cordelia’s closet, and Misty had been grabbing them as needed -- taking the majority of them to her shack to stay, rather than taking up some of Queenie’s space in their room.

Cordelia’s closet looks bare now, empty without those long flowing skirts and shawls, but she feels she doesn’t have the room to complain considering the reason that they’re gone now. Their owner returning to claim them.

Really, she wants to say, _Yes, she’ll mind. She’ll be terribly put out. She’ll never forgive you. Sleep with me instead._

But she can’t. She’s the headmaster and the Supreme and there are few things more inappropriate than blatantly coming onto one of her council members, someone younger than her. Her main focus should be on her students, on the Coven, not on her romantic entanglements. Not on the way Misty’s hair looks right then, the crinkle of her eyes as they look at one another. The thrill under her skin as she sits there, under her careful gaze.

Eventually, she manages to say, “Not if you’re quiet, going in,” and Misty nods once before saluting her with two fingers.

“Sure thing, boss,” she jokes, and then smiles, proud of herself.

She’d been quiet in the first few days of her return, much more than Cordelia could ever recall her being before. That was normal, though, as far as she could assume. After a year of whatever torture she’d been trapped inside. But she’d started to come around eventually, started to make jokes again and smile more. She’s returning to herself more and more every day and it’s incredible to witness. Cordelia hadn’t ever dared to hope she’d get the chance at something like that.

There’s another beat or two of pause and then Misty pushes herself upright and takes a few steps to the kitchen table. She drifts her fingers along its surface as she walks, slowly, around it and then she pauses in the doorway to Cordelia’s left.

“Well, goodnight, Miss Cordelia.”

Cordelia stares at her for a long moment, trying to memorize how she looks in the warm glow of the lamp beside her -- blue eyes and flowery skirt and bare feet. That easy smile she’s always fixing Cordelia’s way that makes her heart feel like it’s being absolutely squeezed in her chest. She doesn’t want to forget this moment, even if there will be others tomorrow. Just as important. Just as wonderful.

“Goodnight, Misty,” she says softly.

“See ya’ tomorrow?”

There’s a hopeful lilt to her voice. They have a tomorrow to see in the first place, and isn’t that magnificent enough in itself?

Cordelia smiles, easy and loose. “Of course you will,” she tells her. “Tomorrow.”

Misty nods once and then gives a little wave, turning to disappear into the darkness of the house. Cordelia stays where she is, listening to the sound of soft footsteps going up the steps and then the creak of a bedroom door at the top of them. And then she closes her eyes, exhaling slowly through parted lips.

The darkness isn’t as oppressive as it was just a little while prior. Knowing that Misty is just up the steps, climbing into bed -- that she’ll be there in the morning -- makes everything feel a little bit brighter.

 

.

_December._

.

 

“Girl, that is the most crooked star I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s a six-and-a-half foot tree. If you’re not gonna get a ladder or help me, then shut up.”

“You do realize you have magic, right?”

At this, Queenie flicks her wrist and the sparkling white star that Zoe’s just spent the last five minutes trying to wrangle onto the top of their fake Christmas tree straightens itself out. She turns to Zoe and gives her a smug look that has Zoe rolling her eyes.

“Whatever. Take the easy way out. Loser.”

Misty’s eyes meet Cordelia’s from across the room and she shakes her head. She’s sitting on the couch in the living room, legs criss-crossed on the cushions, tucked into a sweater that she definitely stole from Cordelia’s closet. For a moment, Cordelia considers asking her when she took it -- it’s been weeks since she saw it hung up there beside some of Misty’s dresses and skirts, but this is the first time she’s actually seen it on her. If she could make it through the question without accidentally saying how good it looks on her, she thinks she would.

The only student who’d deigned to stay had been Mallory, the rest of them having left to go home for the holidays several days prior. Last year, they hadn’t even bothered putting up a Christmas tree at all. Cordelia had been far too busy settling into this new era of the Coven to worry about starting new traditions. But Zoe and Queenie both had been insistent this year, and with Misty around to to join in on their begging, she’d been severely outnumbered.

Now, there are Christmas songs being churned out of the speakers that Zoe has her phone plugged into and Kyle is wearing a terrible Christmas sweater she must have bought him, complete with tassels and a bell that jingles every time he bends over to pick up an ornament from the box the girls had bought at the store to hand over to them. Even Queenie’s normal sarcastic t-shirt has been replaced with a shirt with Rudolph on it and she’s smiling freely, looser in the holiday spirit than Cordelia thinks she’s ever seen her.

Earlier, Mallory had been the one to hang the wreath on the door and string garland down the banisters of the stairs. Now she seems content to just sit on the couch beside Misty, watching as her particular brand of participation. In the month since Misty returned and Mallory arrived at the school, the two have become good friends, though Cordelia isn’t surprised in the slightest. It had been Misty that Mallory reminded her of when she’d walked into her office the day she’d arrived -- the same gentle, kind spirit flowing off her in easy waves as it did with Misty.

Even now, Mallory begins to hum along to _Baby, It’s Cold Outside_ and Misty joins in on the harmony. They glance at each other and smile and Cordelia watches the whole thing from where she’s leaned against the wall by the piano.

"I love Christmas. I'm glad we're doing this," Zoe comments after a minute or two of silence. She glances over at them from where she’s hanging an ornament shaped like an icicle on one of the tree’s branches. “Better than my house. I'd be lucky if my parents weren't in a knife-fight by this point in holiday the preparation process."

Queenie laughs. “I'm not surprised at all."

"What does that even mean?"

In response, Queenie just shakes her head, giving no further information. Zoe rolls her eyes and goes back to hanging candy canes on some of the branches.

"At least I don't have to spend every minute leading up to Christmas in church here," Mallory says, a dark look on her face as she stares vacantly at the fireplace right across from the couch, rather than looking at any of them. When she’d first arrived, she’d only spoken briefly about her parents, but it had been clear from that conversation that her powers had not been accepted as anything beyond evil by them.

Cordelia longs to comfort her, but she doesn’t know how, so she stays where she is.

"That's true," Misty joins in. "Less boring here."

"I could always drag you down to the nearest church if you're missing your family," Queenie jokes, smirking at Misty as she says it.

In all the excitement, it’s clearly been forgotten that her family had participated in the mob that led to her being burned alive all that time ago. Cordelia stiffens a little, ready to intervene if Misty’s expression should fall, but it doesn’t. She just frowns, consideringly, and then looks back up at Queenie.

Kyle turns to look at Misty, holding an ornament in each hand. The bell on his sweater jingles and Zoe reaches out to press it into his chest in order to quiet it.

"Nah, that's alright," Misty tells her. "Better off here. My folks are probably glad to not have to bother with presents anyway. We couldn't ever afford much. I usually ended up with socks.

“That sucks,” Zoe says, but Misty shrugs.

“Nah, socks are alright. ‘Specially in the winter. My feet get cold.”

“That’s because you never wear shoes,” Queenie ribs her and they all laugh.

The tension rolls of off Mallory’s shoulders and even Kyle knows enough to join in. Cordelia smiles at the sound, at the sight. Before these girls, when her mother was in charge, there had rarely been moments like this -- light ones, where life felt alright to exist inside. She can hardly even believe it.

"You guys do this kind of thing when you went here, Miss Cordelia?" Misty asks when silence falls again, her eyes turning to face the other woman, who warms under her gaze, looking caught. 

“Oh no,” Cordelia answers, shaking her head. “I was the only one who stayed, growing up here. Everyone else had parents to go home too. I think I spent every Christmas in the greenhouse by myself.”

She doesn’t mean for it to sound as pitiful as it comes out, but the rest of them watch her carefully for a few long moments. Almost as if they’re expecting her to attach a deeper emotional response to it. There’s hardly anything to it at all, though. Any time spent with her mother, growing up, immediately turned South. Spending Christmas on her own, save for Myrtle or a few of the council members, had practically felt like a vacation. And, anyway, she hadn’t known enough to know the difference.

Even now, the entire holiday feels like something she can only be a bystander to, rather than a participant. Perhaps that’s why she’s standing on the other side of the room.

“Well, that sounds pretty lousy,” Queenie says, whistling through her teeth.

Zoe shakes her head and takes another ornament from Kyle. “I’m sorry, Cordelia.”

“Don’t be. I like the quiet.”

Neither her nor Queenie, though, look like they believe her. Even Kyle has a pitying look on his face.

“Yeah, that actually sounds pretty nice.”

It’s Misty that cuts in, her voice soft and easy as she says in. Not quite like she’s coming to Cordelia’s rescue, but rather like she’d known that Cordelia could use another person on her side. Beside her Mallory nods her head in agreement.

“Really nice.”

Zoe and Queenie share a look, but don’t argue further, and they finish decorating the tree together.

When it’s finished, Kyle plugs it in and Cordelia smiles as the girls admire their teamwork. It’s a cute enough tree, though there are no presents beneath it quite yet. Cordelia isn’t even sure that there will be, but the whole thing certainly feels more festive than any other Christmas that Cordelia has spent in this house.

On Christmas Eve, when she can’t sleep, she wanders downstairs to find the tree still plugged in and Misty sitting on the floor, leaned back on the couch, staring at it. The house is quiet and Cordelia wonders how many more times she’ll be caught alone with Misty on nights like this. She hopes that she will be as many times as she can.

“D’you think Santa Claus’ll skip our house if he knows we’re up?” Misty asks when Cordelia slides down to sit on the floor beside her. Their shoulders brush and Cordelia presses her hands between her own knees to keep from touching the woman beside her.

Misty has her knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around them, and she’s wearing a loose nightgown that Cordelia thinks might be more of a dress than anything else, and more rings than she thinks anyone should wear to bed. She feels almost out of place in her robe and flannel pajamas, and looks away.

Misty is too much to look at on an ordinary day.

Under the romantic glow of the lights on the tree on Christmas Eve, she’s practically unbearable.

“I’m fairly certain he’s accustomed to skipping this house anyway after the years my mother lived here.”

She means it as a joke, but she’s still relieved when Misty seems to understand that. The sound of her quiet laugh reaches her ears and it’s enough to have her braving eye contact again.

“Nah, Miss Cordelia. You ain’t got a naughty bone in your body. No way he can pass you by.”

It’s an odd compliment and possibly more of a joke than anything else, so there’s no reason for it to affect Cordelia the way that it does. But she can still feel the heat flushing across her neck and up her cheeks. She’s thankful for how dark it is, thankful that it’s easier to hide when Misty turns her soft, blue eyes her way.

“What can I say? I’m easy to overlook.”

And she’s not sure if it’s the conversation or the setting or just the way Misty is looking at her, but the entire self-deprecating statement comes out as little more than a whisper. It’s possible that she’d meant it to be more lighthearted than it ends up as, but it comes out far more serious than initially intended and she can feel the exact moment when everything shifts.

Misty’s eyes meet hers and Cordelia’s breath hitches at the intensity she finds there. It lasts for a beat longer than Cordelia thinks might be strictly necessary or even appropriate, as if the two of them are stuck in this perpetual limbo where they can’t quite decide what they’re allowed to say, what they’re allowed to do.

If she were braver, if she were anyone else, Cordelia knows that she would lean across the short gap between them and just kiss her. Finally. _Finally._ She’d kiss Misty and she thinks that Misty -- in a perfect world, at least -- would probably kiss her back.

But she isn’t brave. She may be the Supreme, she may have finally found her purpose, but she has never entertained for one second that she is worthy of the position. It hardly ever goes to the most worthy, she supposes. Or else her mother would never have been left in charge in the first place.

Of course, all of that is entirely beside the point.

“Not to me,” Misty says softly after a moment. She rounds each syllable carefully, and it’s impossible to miss the emotion in her eyes. How much she means this.

There’s nothing for Cordelia to say. All she can manage is, “Thank you,” in a voice so quiet that she’s not even entirely certain it’s audible.

The moment lingers a little while longer, but nothing happens. Either because Cordelia does not allow herself or because Misty is just as unsure as she is. Possibly, some dreadful combination of the two.

Eventually, they must fall asleep, because it’s morning some time later and Cordelia has a crick in her neck from her head lolling back against the couch. Misty’s head is heavy on her shoulder and some of her hair ended up in Cordelia’s open mouth somehow and they wake up shy as they pull themselves apart, each of them apologizing for things they have no reason to be sorry for.

Christmas morning is a quiet affair. Zoe gifts her too much office supplies because she’s apparently spent the last few weeks complaining about her stapler. Queenie gives her a nice sweater. Kyle made her a card. Mallory gives her a decorative porcelain fawn with a look on her face that Cordelia can’t quite interpret, so she thanks her and vows to put it on her desk.

It’s Misty’s gift that lessens the tension left over from the night before, though, that makes Cordelia wonder why she’s been spending so much time trying to reign herself in.

“Wasn’t sure if you had any,” is what Misty says when she unwraps the oddly shaped parcel. “I like your eyes too much to let you mess ‘em up again.”

Cordelia laughs. She can’t help it. She unfolds the bright pink sunglasses and slips them on. “Just don’t go getting trapped in another mausoleum so I don’t have to,” she jokes and Misty lets out a cackle at the response.

Zoe and Queenie are giving them both odd, distantly amused looks and Mallory looks so confused that Cordelia almost begins to explain the entire thing. She decides against it at the last moment, enjoying the way Misty’s smiling at her too much to break it by saying it all aloud.

When Misty opens the pair of socks Cordelia gave her a few minutes later, she laughs again and immediately slips them onto her feet. It’s the first time Cordelia thinks it’s ever really felt like Christmas.

 

.

_January._

.

 

The first month of the new year is long and cold and _wet._ It rains every day and the girls are miserable in their classes, refusing to get any actual work done. By the end of the month, she’s begun to feel it, too -- the stress and the ache of the month coming to her in tension headaches that, fortunately, never last very long.

“Can you even get sick?” Zoe asks one day, when she catches Cordelia opening a bottle of pain reliever in the kitchen.

“No,” Cordelia tells her. “But between the weather and these girls, I’ll end up in an early grave either way.”

She only slightly means it.

Out of all of them, though, Misty seems to be the most miserable. Her classes out in the greenhouse end up cancelled for three days straight in the middle of the month when the rain floods it so terribly that no one can wander out without knee-high rain boots. She moves into the house more permanently to avoid the rising water in the swamp and the cold, un-insulated walls of her shack.

It’s an irony, really, that the very thing that upsets her so deeply -- being away from her safe haven -- is the thing that puts Cordelia more at ease. It’s a relief to see her at breakfast each morning, to catch her wandering the halls between classes, or curled up on a chair in the living room, looking forlornly out the window. She gets used to having her around all the time, to barely having to glance up to know that she’s there, and she tells herself to be careful about that. It’s been two months and she keeps expecting to wake up, to find her gone.

She wonders if that feeling will ever go away.

One week when it rains nonstop without a break, Mallory comes home from her free hours with potted succulent that she gives to Misty without so much as a word. Cordelia watches the whole thing unfold from where she’s talking to a few of the girls in the dining room -- watches as Misty perks up from her perch on the stairs as Mallory comes in, watches the silent exchange as Mallory hands her the plant.

“Never had one of these before,” she thinks she hears Misty say. “Always thought they were too easy.”

Mallory says something that Cordelia can’t quite hear but they’re both smiling and then Misty reaches out and tugs the other girl into her arms, careful not to prick her with the plant. The hug lasts for a few seconds and then the two of them drift towards the living room, out of sight.

When Cordelia turns back to the others, Queenie is giving her a withering smile.

“What?” she asks.

“You look damn near close to setting Mallory on fire with your mind. Reign it in.”

Cordelia can’t tell if she’d been wearing her thoughts on her face that blatantly, or if Queenie is just knows her particularly well. She dips her head sheepishly, feeling immediately guilty for that rush of envy she’d felt from watching that exchange.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she says quickly. "I'm not going to set... _anyone_ on fire. That's the last thing we need right now."

Mostly, she's just trying to say something -- anything -- that can cover her tracks. There's no reason for this sickening heat in her chest. None at all. No reason for her to be jealous like some sort of school girl with a crush, longing to be in Misty's arms again like that. Her and Misty have been careful in the last few months, and any touches had been sparing and short. Cordelia doesn't dare to allow herself anything greater than that, and Misty seems just as afraid, just as tentative. Or else she's completely oblivious to Cordelia's plight. But there she is, pulling Mallory into her arms with such ease that it makes Cordelia clench her fingers closed so tight that her nails dig into her palms painfully.

"Really?" Queenie asks. "Not even...hm..." She pokes at her chin, pretending to be thinking and then says, "Mallory?"

Cordelia fixes her with a hard look. "I can't imagine I'd be a very good Supreme if I just went around lighting my girls on fire with my mind, Queenie."

Queenie scoffs. "No worse than your mom."

If it were anyone else, the joke would have come out accusatory. With Queenie, it just comes out as a well-intentioned reminder that Cordelia is very, very much  _not_ Fiona Goode. 

Cordelia glances over at the other girls in the room, afraid for a moment that they might have caught on to the line of questioning happening on her side, but they're far too absorbed in whatever it is Zoe is talking about -- emphatically, and with a lot of hand gestures. She looks back at Queenie.

"Look, if it helps, I'm pretty certain that girl doesn't notice a single person besides you anyways."

Cordelia straightens her back in her chair and looks Queenie straight in the eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.” Queenie rolls her eyes. “You know, for being the Supreme, you sure are a shitty liar, huh?”

At that moment, Misty drifts in with Mallory at her heels. She’s still holding the potted plant in her arms, cradling it like it’s a child, and Mallory goes to stand by Zoe at the end of the table, immediately joining in on their conversation. Misty drifts to the counter where she sets the plant down and then looks up, immediately catching Cordelia’s eye.

“Look what Miss Mallory gave me,” she says with a bright grin. “Something that don’t need water as much. Look at how cute it is.” She looks back down at the plant, still smiling.

“Kinda ironic in this weather,” Queenie comments and Mallory looks over at her.

“That was the point,” she tells her, dryly.

“Isn’t that just the funniest thing?” Misty asks, looking at Cordelia again.

A present. Just a present. Something to improve Misty’s sour mood. The kind of things friends do for one another. Nothing more.

Cordelia turns and smiles at Mallory, and then back at Misty. “It’s a lovely gift.”

Misty just grins, toothy and wide, and turns back down to fuss over the plant, and, at the mere sight of her enjoying herself so much, Cordelia’s headache -- the one she’s sporting for the past few hours, at least -- begins to shrink away. After a second or two, it’s all but completely gone.

“Like I said,” Queenie whispers, so that the others can’t hear. “Shitty liar.”

Cordelia can’t quite look away from Misty. Not even long enough to agree.

 

.

_February._

.

 

“Couldn’t we have gone on a mandatory field trip in, like, summer or some shit?”

“Aren’t you just glad to be outside, Queenie?”

“You were that weird kid in school, huh? The kind that liked fire drills.”

“What can I say? I photosynthesize. I’m like a plant that way.”

“Nah, if any of us is a plant it’s Misty. I think that girl exists on a diet of leaves.”

“Wouldn’t that technically make her a cannibal?”

Cordelia shakes her head and rolls her eyes, turning to look over her shoulder at Queenie and Zoe who are trailing behind the rest of the girls as they make their way down the riverfront. It’s a warmer day than it has been all month, but the breeze coming in off the river is still crisp. She presses her hands further into the pockets of her jacket.

The sun is out, at least, and the others have warmed under its insistent, bright beams. She can feel their spirits rising already, her students chattering happily as they walk along, a line of girls dressed all in black that might resemble a funeral procession if it weren’t for how much they all seem to be enjoying themselves.

“If the members of the council could refrain from discussing cannibalism on such a pretty day, that would be lovely,” she jokes, making sure to turn long enough that they can hear her.

Zoe cracks a grin. “What else would we talk about?”

“Yeah,” Queenie says. “Shit got boring when you rose to power. Safe, sure. But boring. Let us have this.”

Cordelia shakes her head again and keeps walking. Behind her, she can hear that Queenie and Zoe have fallen into a companionable silence. It’s easy now, the three of them, where it had been so hard before. For a while, that first year, she hadn’t been able to figure out what it was exactly that had changed. If it was the absence of certain members of the Coven or something else entirely. She’s tentative to give herself any of the credit, though she’s wondered, at times, if it had helped the pair of them that their Supreme was someone they trusted -- someone who had only wanted the best for them before she even took over.

Or maybe this is just how things are allowed to be now that it’s easy. Now that they’re four instead of three and they’re no longer a dying breed.

Up ahead, past a dozen or so of the girls, Mallory is walking slowly beside Misty. They’re talking in that way that they always do when it’s just the two of them -- soft and serious, in special tones that they have reserved just for each other. Cordelia has learned to make space for this, glad that Misty has someone to whom she can speak in this way -- someone that she can relate to who isn’t technically her superior, though she longs to know some of the things that she says to the younger girl, even if she’d never have the gall to ask.

A few of the girls eventually break off when they reach a nestle of food trucks a little further down, pawing out money sent by their parents and asking for silent permission from their Supreme. Cordelia gives a few of them a nod and a simple smile that they happily return, gives them a time to make sure they meet back at and then they break off.

In the fall, they’d done this a lot. Just gone out on the town. It’s different now that people recognized them from TV, understood who they are and what they can do, but they’ve yet to be turned away from any establishments, either out of fear of the repercussions or some sort of begrudging sense of community. Whether or not the citizens of New Orleans like it, this Coven is _their_ city’s Coven, and it isn’t likely to go anywhere anytime soon.

It’s good for them to go out, to remind people that they’re there. That’s what Cordelia argues, at least. Even better than that, it’s good for the girls to get out of the Academy now and again, to bond with their fellow witches and have some time to unwind with some lax supervision from their teachers.

Zoe and Queenie eventually wander off to a crepe food truck together, bickering about potential fillings as they go. Cordelia watches them and smiles, remembering a time not that long ago when they’d hardly even been able to stand each other, let alone willingly spend time together. Now, they’re practically attached at the hip. There’s something to be said about the friends you make when they’re all you have left.

When they’re gone, she turns and looks out at the water, hand on the cold metal railing. There’s only a few minutes of peace before she hears Mallory’s voice ring out behind her, pitched high with an emotion that can only be panic.

“Misty? It’s okay. It’s okay. Just breathe.”

Cordelia whips around. They’re only a few feet away, in a patch of grass past one of the benches on the sidewalk. Misty is sitting on the ground, her head cradled between her hands and Mallory is kneeling beside her. Even from where she’s standing, Cordelia can see how rapidly and unevenly Misty is breathing and she practically runs over to them.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” she asks, and it’s impossible to keep the edge of terror out of her voice.

“There was a...it was there. I thought they hibernated or something, but…” Mallory begins to explain, but her words are jumbled, and she turns back to Misty before she finishes. “It’s okay. Just breathe. You’re safe now.”

“What was was here? What happened, Mallory?”

Mallory swivels her head and looks at her, shaking her head. “She saw a frog, and…”

Immediately, dread drops like a heavy brick in Cordelia’s stomach, heart spiking into her throat. Of course, she thinks. Of _course_.  

She drops to her knees in front of Misty, who is still shaking. She’s making small whimpering noises and they’ve gotten the attention of a few other people walking along the riverfront nearby. Mallory gives them a hard look, like she expects that to be enough to get them to move along, but it only works on a few.

“Misty,” Cordelia says, as softly as she can manage. “Misty, can you hear me?”

Misty doesn’t look up or make any sort of sign that she’s heard her. She just keeps her head tucked down in her hands, knees drawn up and face hidden behind them. Her shoulders are shaking with each labored breath.

“You’re safe now, sweetie,” Cordelia continues. “You’re safe. You’re not in that place. You’re here. You’re with us. You’re home.”

Still, there’s no sign of her having heard the words or even understanding them, but Cordelia knows she has to keep going. She’s grateful that it’s only her and Mallory here to see this. She doubts that Misty would want the others to witness something like this, something that she might be ashamed of, even if there’s no reason for her to be ashamed of it.

“We’re in the park, Misty. We’re in the park together. You’re with Mallory and me and the others just left. But we’re all here together and you’re safe. You’re okay.” She pauses, glancing at Mallory who has her fingers clenched around some of the cold grass below them, ripping some of the blades up from the force of her grip. “Misty, can I touch you, sweetie?”

There’s a long pause, what feels like forever, and then she sees Misty’s head jerk up and down. Just once. With careful, gentle fingers, she reaches out and puts her hand on Misty’s knee over the fabric of her skirt. She squeezes her knee gently.

“Grab my hand, sweetie. I’m right here. You’re okay.”

It takes a moment, but Misty loosens her fingers from where she’d been gripping her hair and then she fumbles to rest it on Cordelia’s hand. Cordelia lifts her thumb and nudges it along the line of Misty’s finger as softly as she can manage.

“See? I’m right here. I’m with you. I won’t leave you.”

She’s not certain who she’s saying it for -- herself or for Misty -- but the emotion of it is the same. Beside her, Mallory unclenches some of the grass below her and grabs Cordelia’s forearm, not quite touching Misty, but joining in as much as she can without startling anyone.

“Do you know where you are?” Cordelia asks.

Another pause, and then Misty’s croaks out a quiet, “The park.”

Cordelia nods, even though the other girl can’t see her. “That’s right. We’re in the park. You and me and Mallory. We’re together.”

Misty nods, her head moving against her knees where she’s curled up and Cordelia reaches out with her other hand, knees pressed into the dirt, and rests it on her shoulder.

“Just breathe, okay?” she encourages. “In and out.”

It takes some time, but eventually Misty’s breathing evens out. When she finally lifts her head, her eyes are bloodshot and her eyeliner has begun to streak down her cheeks. Cordelia moves the hand that Misty’s not holding and cups her jawline -- giving her enough room to pull away -- and wipes some of it away with her thumb.

“Keep breathing. We’re okay. It’s okay.”

Misty nods. “We’re okay,” she whispers, voice cracking a little. “We’re okay.”

Tears prickle hot in Cordelia’s eyes, but she bites her lip to keep them at bay. The last thing she wants is to start crying right now when Misty needs reassurance above all else. “You’re here with us, Misty. You’re here.”

“I’m here,” Misty repeats, a little more sure than before. “I’m here. We’re okay.”

“That’s right.”

Mallory looks between them, and she’s crying more freely than Cordelia is. The tension of the moment, all the things that are being left unsaid, is almost unbearably tight in Cordelia’s chest. The entire world feels tilted, off-kilter. She wonders if it will ever be able to right itself all the way.

“Do you want to stand up?” Cordelia asks.

Not _can you._ No good can come from leaning the question in that particular direction.

Misty nods and Cordelia helps her to her feet, holding her hands loosely between her own. Beside them, Mallory stands, also, and takes a step back like she’s trying to give them enough room.

“Can I hold you?”

It’s this question, so weighted in its meaning, that’s almost Cordelia’s undoing. Because she knows that, if Misty says yes, there’s no way she’ll ever want to let her go. And if Misty says no, she’ll take it far more personally than she should, even though there are plenty of valid reasons that Misty could have for not wanting to be touched in such a containing way. There are plenty of things for her to be sensitive about and the answer to that question should, under no circumstances, be one of them.

But Misty doesn’t say no. Instead, she nods. And when Cordelia opens her arms to her, she folds herself into them like a child, tucking her face into Cordelia’s neck and wrapping shaking arms around Cordelia’s waist. For her part, Cordelia tries not to thrill as much as she does with Misty so close, her breath puffing out against the skin of her neck and making her nearly shiver. She simply wraps her own arms around Misty and holds her as firmly as she can, trying to ground her, trying to give her a place to come home to.

She closes her eyes and leans her head against Misty’s blonde curls and breathes, in and out -- trying to give the other woman a proper example, some sort of guide. Beside them, Mallory looks away, arms crossed over stomach. When Cordelia opens her eyes again to look at her, there’s a dark look on her face. It’s the same one that she’s seen Mallory get so often since she arrived. As if there is something that she is explicitly not telling them. Something that makes her face fall every so often in its memory. Something that has her looking away like she is.

“M’sorry.”

That’s what Misty says when she pulls away just a few minutes later, much sooner than Cordelia would have liked. She tugs herself away and folds her arms around her waist, as though she’s trying to hold herself together, looking bashfully down at her feet rather than trying to meet their eyes.

Cordelia frowns. “There’s no reason to be.”

“Seems silly. Havin’ a fit over a little thing that didn’t mean anything.”

And maybe it does, assuming there wasn’t a reason for it. But Misty had told her about it, about her Hell -- that long year spent butchering helpless creature after helpless creature in a cycle so devious, so repetitive, that there’d been no real way for her to pull away. She’d shared the memories in a quiet voice that had seemed to belong more to a child than to her as they’d sat together in Cordelia’s office, the door closed firmly behind them just an hour after she’d come in that door. She’d told her and Cordelia had held her hand and asked how she could help, how she could heal her.

Eventually, they’d decided on space. On time. Because there was hardly a proven method for getting over the trauma induced by a year of such endless torture.

Now, she can’t help but feel that she should have done more. She shouldn’t have just pretended that everything was normal, that nothing had changed and Misty had never left in the first place. She should have been helping her, guiding her. If she had, maybe they wouldn’t be standing here like this.

“I thought frogs hibernated or something,” Mallory says, voice flat. Her eyes still shine with unshed tears and it’s clearly meant as some sort of self-admonishment. “I’m so sorry, Misty.”

Misty shivers as the wind blows off the river. “S’not your fault.”

Mallory sort of seems like she wants to argue that point, but Cordelia is quick to jump in before they stuck in an blame-pointing cycle.

“Do you want to go back to the Academy?” she asks. “I can take you home.”

“Oh, I’ll be alright.”

Even as she says it, though, it’s clear that, even if she _will_ be at some point, she isn’t just then. Her shoulders are slouched in a way that Cordelia doesn’t think she’s ever seen them -- some un-Misty-like way that makes her wish she could draw her into her arms again and never let go of her.

“I can take her,” Mallory offers. “So you can stay.”

It’s a kind offer and Cordelia flushes with pride at how readily it’s given up, even as she aches to tell her _no._ It’s selfish, but she wants to be the one to walk Misty back, to wrap an arm around her and draw her in; sit her at the table in the kitchen and make her tea; lay her down in her own bed and wrap her body around hers. She wants all sorts of things that she has no business wishing for, let alone attaining.

“Is that okay?” she asks, instead of arguing.

“I don’t wanna put you out or nothin’,” Misty argues, always so considerate, always so careful.

Misty is nothing if not terrified of breaking the world around her. She pushes on the edges of her own existence, guiding it to bend rather than snapping, always so scared of doing anything more than asking for her share.

“You’re not,” Mallory tells her.

“If you’re sure.”

“I am.”

There’s a stand-off for a moment, the two of them looking at one another as Cordelia glances between them, and then Misty breaks the staring contest. Her eyes meet Cordelia’s and she gives her a sheepish, sad smile. “Okay,” she whispers. “Guess we’ll go then.”

It’s some sort of goodbye. Since she came back, neither of them has been particularly good at saying anything more than vague farewells that heavily imply that they’ll see each other soon enough. Anything less would have her forgetting again, Cordelia thinks, that Misty is here to stay.

As they leave, heading slowly back the way that they came, Mallory gives Cordelia a look as if she’s trying to tell her without words that she’ll take care of Misty, that everything is going to be okay. Cordelia watches them go and tries to believe that.

The rest of the girls start drifting back just twenty minutes later and Cordelia spends the time sitting on a bench and trying not to cry. When Zoe asks where Misty and Mallory went, she keeps her answer as brief and vague as possible.

By the time they get back, the sun has begun to go down and the girls float into the house, still bright from their afternoon out. They disperse into various rooms, some going upstairs, others moving into the living room, in small groups as soon as the doors are open. There’s something burning in the kitchen. Kyle has been learning to cook slowly over the past year and, while he’s made some serious improvements, there is still the occasional misstep.

“Shit,” Zoe whispers when she smells it too and then she rushes through the house to help him.

“I’m gonna go back sure her boy-toy doesn’t burn the joint down,” Queenie says and then she follows after her.

Cordelia watches her go, listens to the sound of the kitchen sink running and Queenie’s firm reprimands, the chattering conversations happening in various rooms of the house. After a minute, she makes her way upstairs and down the hallway to the room Misty shares with Queenie. She lifts her hand to knock and then thinks better of it, not wanting to wake Misty if she’s asleep inside. The door is unlocked and she opens it slowly, carefully, to find Misty asleep under a pile of blankets in her bed on the other side of the room.

Mallory is slumped in the armchair by the window, her chin resting on her hand. She looks up as Cordelia enters and gets to her feet, tiptoeing across the room to meet her. When she reaches the door, she steps outside and Cordelia pulls it around so that it’s mostly closed, but she can still see Misty, fast asleep.

“How is she?” she asks.

Mallory smiles, a little dolefully. “Better, I think. Pretty tired. I figured I should just let her sleep.”

Cordelia nods and looks back at Misty’s sleeping form. She seems peaceful like this, younger. Cordelia can very nearly pretend that she’d never gone through an inch of all the terrible things she’s seen in her life from this angle.

“I don’t know how to help her,” she whispers, and immediately wilts in the seconds following the confession.

Mallory is her student, first and foremost, and the last thing the girl needs is the regret of her Supreme being shoved onto her shoulders. But Mallory doesn’t even flinch at her words. She doesn’t even seem surprised. There is something to Mallory that always seems so inherently _knowing._ Something that Cordelia isn’t sure she will ever fully understand.

“You did help,” Mallory tells her. “You _are_ helping.”

“Then why does it feel like the opposite?”

She’s not even sure why she’s asking -- if she expects Mallory to have some sort of answer to this puzzle. It comes out without her permission, without any sort of premeditation on her part.

“She went through something awful. Over and over,” Mallory reminds her, as if Cordelia needs reminded of something like that.

As if she doesn’t already know.

“But...setbacks don’t mean she’s not getting better. We just have to let her take the lead.”

Cordelia looks at her, mulls this over, and then she says, “She didn’t say anything...I...I didn’t know it was still this bad.”

“I don’t think she wanted you to know,” Mallory tells her. “We've...she's talked to me about it a few times. I think she...I think she didn't want any of you guys to feel like you needed to drop everything to help her.”

She thinks about that -- about Misty healing and suffering and trying to move on without wanting to ask for the necessary aid. Of course she wouldn’t want her burden to become someone else’s. Of course she would try to make it through it all on her own.

“Yeah,” she says, more a murmur than anything else, the word just sort of slipping past her lips. She looks at Mallory, hard. This young girl who seems so much older than she is, who looks around at the world as if she’s lived this life before. “You’re wise beyond your years. I’m glad she has a friend like you.”

Mallory shies under Cordelia’s compliment, but she doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she says, “I’m glad to have all of you.”

Something about the way she says it offers more emotion than Cordelia thinks it’s strictly meant to. Mallory’s eyes don’t leave hers for a few beats, but, by the time they do, Cordelia has already begun to wonder at the familiarity, the awareness, in them.

 

.

_March._

.

 

Queenie’s birthday falls on a Friday, and that’s all the excuse she needs to insist on some sort of celebration. Cordelia can hardly complain, or say no. There isn’t any room for it. The winter had been long and cold and sometimes she feels guilty for thrusting so much responsibility onto girls as young as her and Zoe -- and now Misty. If anything, they deserve a break, if only for the night.

So she stays home with the other girls while Queenie drags Zoe, Kyle, and Misty to God-knows-where. Dinner is a quiet affair without Queenie’s loud laugh or Zoe’s calming presence, Misty’s rapt attention towards anyone who starts a conversation with her. Even Kyle’s trademark stoicism is missed.

It isn’t until around two o’clock in the morning that they finally stumble in the front door, talking in harsh whispers and trying to muffle their laughter. Cordelia is curled up on the couch with a book in her lap, but she hasn’t been reading it for some time -- too busy wondering at when they’d finally make it home safe and sound. She looks up as she hears the door close and Queenie comes shuffling into view with Kyle’s steady arm around her.

She’s half-slumped over, eyes drifting closed sleepily and Cordelia is worried for exactly five seconds before Zoe comes into view, her expression a combination of annoyance and amusement.

“Did you have fun?” Cordelia asks, sliding the blanket off her lap.

“These two did,” Zoe says. She nods at Queenie and then turning to nod at someone else who isn’t there. She realizes it a second too late, expression slipping into confusion. “Where’d she go?”

Cordelia perks up and Queenie lolls her head on Kyle’s shoulder to look towards the entryway, where Cordelia can’t see.

Zoe frowns. “Misty, close the door.”

“But it’s so stuffy in here, Zoe. You can’t even smell the grass or hear the crickets or nothin',” Misty says from what Cordelia can only assume is the front door. There’s a light breeze drifting into the house now, and Misty’s voice is slurred, her accent slow and tired from the alcohol.

“You’re gonna let bugs in, you weirdo,” Zoe scolds, and then she disappears out of the archway.

Cordelia can hear her close the door and when she comes back, Misty is behind her, walking slowly. When she sees Cordelia, she grins and waves.

“Should I save my lecture on underage drinking for tomorrow, or shall we get right to it tonight?” Cordelia asks, one eyebrow raised as she gives each of them an admonishing look in turn.

Zoe frowns and looks away. “Would it help if I repped Kyle’s and my D.D. skills?”

“Definitely not,” Cordelia says.

“Well, in that case…” She glances over at Queenie, who looks to be half-asleep against Kyle’s shoulder now. “Maybe save it for tomorrow? Wouldn’t want her to miss the good stuff and I don’t think all of her brain cells are in working order right now.”

Cordelia shakes her head. “Take her to bed, please.”

Kyle jerks his head in a nod and turns Queenie towards the stairs with some help from Zoe. They disappear from view and it isn’t until they’re gone that she realizes that Misty is still there, leaned against the wall and watching her.

“You’re supposed to be the responsible one,” Cordelia says, and she’s only half-serious.

“Me?” Misty asks, jabbing her finger at her own sternum. She winces when it makes impact and then blows a raspberry for a beat too long.

“Yes, you. You're the oldest. I'd thought you understood that meant you were in charge of them tonight.”

“Okay, you wanna hear a secret?” As she asks, she stumbles forward from the wall and hits the back of the sofa, gripping it in her hands and sliding onto her knees so she can rest her chin on it. Her face is close to Cordelia’s, where she’s still sitting on the couch, but Cordelia can’t bring herself to pull away any farther. “I wasn’t supposed ta’ be drinkin’.”

Cordelia hums. “Is that so?”

She doesn't explain that the point of her scolding had been over the fact that Misty hadn't seen anything wrong with someone underage drinking, and not over Misty, herself, having gotten drunk. If she missed that already, Cordelia doubts that Misty would understand it in a slightly altered reiteration.

Misty nods, her chin hitting the sofa back with the movement. “Yep.”

She pops the ‘p’ at the end of the word with a loud smack of her lips and Cordelia bites her lip to keep from laughing. She’s adorable like this, so young and free. Her inhibitions gone for the time being, worries nonexistent or, at the least, pushed far enough back to not bother her.

“Care to tell me how you wound up inebriated then?” Cordelia asks. “Magic?”

Misty lets out an undignified snort at her tasteless joke. “Nah. Nah. They were askin’ me all sorts of questions I thought’d be easier to answer not sober.”

Cordelia frowns, immediately imagining the worst. “Questions?”

“About you.”

“Am I allowed to know any specifics, or is it a secret?”

She looks like she’s considering this for a moment, but then she says, “I’ll tell you sometime, okay? Pinky swear.”

When she offers her pinky to Cordelia, there’s no option but for her to link her own pinky to hers, wishing she could push for answers to the questions plaguing her mind. The others had been talking about her, asking Misty about her, and it had been enough that Misty had gotten drunk in order to cope. She wants to go upstairs right now and demand answers from Zoe, but Misty’s skin is so soft on her finger and she’s looking at her so delicately that she can’t look away.

It doesn’t last nearly as long as she’d like. Misty breaks away and then Cordelia gets up and makes sure she gets up the stairs okay, offering her an arm to lean on as they go. Queenie is fast asleep on top of the covers when they get inside, the clothes she’d been wearing before -- save for her shoes -- still on and a thin blanket draped over her body.

As soon as she’s in the room properly, Misty starts pulling off layers, moving away from Cordelia to do so. She chucks her flowy, knit vest onto the chair by the window and then starts undoing the buttons on her dress. Cordelia is so surprised that it takes her a second to look away properly when the dress falls down to pool around Misty’s feet, leaving her in her underwear. She hears the other woman kick it away on the floor and then drop into her bed. When she looks back, she’s covered by the blanket and Cordelia tries to make sure her eyes don’t linger.

“All set?” she asks. She’s stalling because she doesn’t want to say goodnight. She can admit that, if only to herself.

Misty nods, head pressed down into the pillow.

“Okay, well…” Cordelia trails off and then turns to leave, but Misty sits up before she can, the blanket dipping down to reveal some of her bra. She stops moving but lifts her eyes to fix them on the ceiling instead.

“There are frogs that freeze in the winter,” Misty says suddenly, and Cordelia drops her eyes to look at her.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. They freeze and their hearts stop and everything. And then when it gets hot again, they thaw right out.”

Cordelia doesn’t know what this has to do with anything for a few seconds, and even begins to chalk it up to Misty’s mostly-drunken state, but then she remembers. And she feels so guilty over being given the liberty of being able to _forget_.

Misty’s Hell. The frog she’d had to dissect over and over. The frog in the park, and the panic attack or flashback or whatever it was that article she’d found when she’d Google’d it a few weeks ago called it.

“Is that so?” Cordelia asks, barely a whisper. She takes a few steps forward until her knees brush against the edge of the bed.

Misty nods. “Yeah. Almost like they’re dead.” Her hand reaches out and grabs at Cordelia’s, fingers cold against Cordelia’s pulse point. “And then they come back, right as rain.” She pauses for a moment, quiet. Then, “I know what that’s like.”

It seems fitting that they can come back to life after being frozen for so long, that they can just wake up and continue on when the time is right. Cordelia turns her hand over and slides her fingers along the soft skin on the back of Misty’s hand.

She could say: _I’m so sorry you went through that._

Or: _It’s all my fault._

Or: _You’re here now. You’re safe._

But she settles on this:

“Yeah. I guess you do.”

Misty smiles, blinking slowly. She’s tired, clearly, already drifting off as Cordelia holds her hand. “You’re doing it again,” Misty whispers.

“Doing what?” Cordelia asks.

“Lookin’ at me like that. In that way you do sometimes.”

There’s nothing for Cordelia to say to that, no way for her to control the way that she looks at Misty, the feelings that make it so. She’s starting to realize that she’d lost every ounce of self-control the moment Misty was in her arms again back in November. She didn’t ever stand a chance. Not really.

“Promise me something?” Misty says.

Cordelia nods. “Of course.”

“Promise me next time you take me to bed, you’ll at least kiss me or somethin’?”

Later, Cordelia won’t know if it’s the way she says it or the words themselves that make her so dizzy. Misty is staring at her, eyes drooping from the exhaustion, but her gaze is firm and it’s clear that it’s not meant to be a joke. Cordelia’s heart beats heavy against her ribcage and she can hear her pulse in her ears. It feels like hours pass before she figures out that she’s meant to actually say something in return.

“I promise,” she whispers.

There's a beat. One second where Cordelia regrets even acknowledging the request because Misty is staring at her from where she's lying in her bed and she's  _not saying anything._

But then she drops her head back down onto her pillow and says, "Holdin' you to that, Miss Supreme." She closes her eyes sleepily and shifts, rolling over so that her back is to Cordelia. "G'night."

Cordelia watches her for a long moment. “Goodnight, Misty,” she says, and then she lets go of her hand.

She closes the bedroom door quietly behind herself on her way out of the room and finds herself lying in her own bed just a few minutes later, wide awake. Any tiredness that had begun to set into her bones at the late hour is gone and she lies there, staring up at her ceiling under the thick weight of her duvet, rethinking the idea that the Supreme can't fall ill because she's certain in that moment -- absolutely positive -- that she's having a heart attack.

 

.

_April._

.

 

When things warm back up, Misty never really moves back to her shack. At least, not permanently. There are a few days, once the rain stops, where Cordelia thinks she might and she wants to ask about it, but then she never does. Misty always comes back to the Academy. Her and Queenie seem to have struck some sort of mutual understanding when it comes to sharing space and it’s easier for her to be around now that she’s taken over the Magical Properties class in the Greenhouse on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The girls perk up with the return of the sunshine and some of the stress from the winter begins to fade away. Everyone except for Mallory, who has been getting quieter and quieter as the days go on. There are times, at meals especially, when she looks at Cordelia as though she is on the cusp of saying something important. She always backs down though. Eventually, Cordelia knows that she will have to ask, but she waits. Bides her time.

It’s easier if Mallory comes to her when she’s ready. Pestering has rarely done anyone good.

Misty keeps healing, though, keeps getting better. Cordelia wants to ask about that, too, but she doesn’t know where she should even start. There have to be lines somewhere, drawn in the sand. Lines that she knows she shouldn’t even try to cross, because she doesn’t want to pressure her, doesn’t want to make things worse. Nothing like what happened that day in the park happens again, that she sees.

So she doesn’t ask.

They are rarely alone together. There is simply too much that Cordelia has to do. She doesn’t even find time to be on her own at all, let alone to simply sit around and socialize. Time they do find with just one another is usually spent in peaceful silence. Misty will bring a book into Cordelia’s office when the other woman is busy, set up camp on one of the chairs across from her desk -- legs swung over the armrest, flipping the pages idly. Every so often during these times, Cordelia will catch Misty staring at her, but it’s always met with a kind smile and her eyes drifting back to her book.

It’s a surprise, then, when they get caught alone in the kitchen one Saturday morning towards the end of the month then. Cordelia is picking at her fruit salad at the counter when Misty drifts in, headphones smashed down over her ears and plugged into the Walkman Zoe bought her for Christmas. She’s bobbing along to whatever she’s listening to -- Cordelia doesn’t have to guess, even if she doesn’t know the particular tape or song -- but she smiles and waves when she sees Cordelia standing there.

“Mornin’,” she chirps, too loud, and she doesn’t pull her headphones off.

Cordelia watches her amusedly as she pulls some cereal from the cabinet and pours it into a bowl. She rummages around in one of the drawers for a minute before she retrieves a spoon and she starts to eat it, dry and crunchy.

They have yet to talk about that night the month before -- what she’d said when Cordelia had been standing beside her bed in the darkness. Cordelia has begun to wonder if Misty even remembers it in the first place. She knows that she cannot be the one to bring it up, so she doesn’t.

She settles for watching the other woman eat dry Cap’n Crunch and bob her head along to whatever tape she’s listening to. Misty always looks so bright in the morning, so prepared. Her hair is styled and she’s wearing less layers than she’d been wearing over the winter, a pair of boots on her feet like she’s planning on going somewhere. After a moment, she catches Cordelia watching her and grins, reaching up to tug the headphones from her ears. They fall to rest around her neck and _Sometimes It’s a Bitch_ comes buzzing through them faintly.

“I was thinkin’ of heading to the Farmer’s Market,” she says, scooping another bite of cereal to her mouth.

Cordelia’s eyes drift down to Misty’s lips, watching her chew. A grape slips off the end of her fork and falls back into the bowl she’s holding. It takes her another beat to realize that it’s an invitation. “Oh,” she hears herself say, and then clears her throat. “Um...that sounds nice. I think Zoe and Queenie can hold down the fort for a morning.”

Misty brightens, nodding her head. “Not like the girls get up before noon on Saturdays anyhow,” she says and then polishes off the rest of her cereal.

It’s humid outside, the heat hitting them the moment the door is open. The sky is blue, cloudless, and there are birds chirping distantly in the trees. Misty relaxes beside her, drifting down the steps with her arms held wide open, eyes closed with her face turned towards the sun. Cordelia closes the door and watches her, waits. Finally, Misty opens her eyes and turns, waving her down the steps.

They walk there, picking their way down the streets to University Square. There are people out, some taking walks with dogs on leashes that Misty stares after longingly. A few men are out mowing lawns in front of their houses. Cordelia strips off her cardigan as they walk, tying it around her hips and thankful she’d dressed in appropriate footwear for such a walk. Her hair sticks to the side of her face in the heat and she tucks it behind her ear. Misty is quiet as they go, occasionally closing her eyes and breathing in deeply through her nose, but nothing else.

Once or twice, their hands brush together, but neither of them makes the move to grip on and not let go. Cordelia doesn’t think she knows how to make that jump. Not yet.

Soon, maybe.

The market is busy when they reach it, the tiny makeshift parking lot across from it full of cars and people buzzing around the various booths, a din of noise as they talk and haggle and laugh. Misty starts off immediately towards a vendor with a huge array of fruit laid out in bins. Cordelia follows after her, stands beside her as she picks and chooses and hands over some cash.

It isn’t until Misty backs away from the table, giving the middle-aged woman behind the table a cheery, “Thank ya’!” that Cordelia sees the bag she’s brought. It’s grey with the silhouette of an alpaca on the front. She watches as Misty shoves the apples and little container of blueberries into it. They rattle against something plastic inside as Misty flips the bag closed. Probably her Walkman.

“Anything catching your eye, Miss Delia?” Misty asks as they wander around, passing by a few carts.

There’s a booth with some pastries and another with some homemade fudge. Cordelia realizes that, in the hurry of leaving, she’d forgotten her purse at home. She grips the edges of her cardigan, still tied around her waist, fingers brushing against the tight denim of her jeans. Misty is walking slowly, no destination in mind though they've only gone to one vendor so far. She doesn't seem to have any intention of going to another. It's possible that they've walked all the way down here for her to buy three apples and a simple carton of blueberries.

“I think I’m okay for now,” Cordelia answers, but it feels like a lie with the way her palms are sweating.

Misty glances over at her, catching her eye, and she bites her lip like there’s something that she wants to say. It feels normal, walking around with her like this. The kind of thing she’d have expected to have done with Hank before he’d--

The kind of thing she hadn’t ever thought she’d get the chance to do with Misty. Cordelia wonders what would happen if she reached out and tucked her hand into Misty’s -- if she’d pull away or if she’d pull her closer. She doesn’t do it, she just curls her fingers tighter into the fabric of her cardigan.

There’s a couple walking towards them through the packed, narrow aisles -- a young woman tucked under the arm of a young man. They look happy, smiling, heads turned to look at each other as they talk in low voices. Cordelia tears her eyes away from them when Misty’s hand brushes into hers, skin soft.

Just as quickly, though, the touch retreats.

She wonders how much of this she’ll let herself have, if she ever will. Because the only relationship she’d ever committed herself to had ended so terribly, in so much _blood_ and _death_ and sometimes she can still hear Hank’s voice, feel his rough stubble against her cheeks. Sometimes she misses him, what they’d had -- or what she’d _thought_ they had -- but it’s not even close to how much she missed this other woman, walking beside her, when she was gone.

More than anything, she does not want to turn out to be her mother. Her mother, who’d put her own personal life above the heads of the Coven, above the _importance_ of all of them. The idea of being anything at all like her frightens her more than anything. She knows that, if it didn’t, she wouldn’t even dare to let Misty’s hand pull away like it does.

“You’re doing it again,” Misty says when her eyes meet Cordelia’s.

Cordelia looks away. She’d been staring. “Sorry,” she whispers. She hadn’t meant to look at her like that again.

But Misty shakes her head and says, “Don’t be.”

 

.

_May._

.

 

Her bedroom is dark and the crickets are loud in the yard outside. Cordelia had needed the space, needed to be alone -- to  _think_. And her bedroom is the only place in the Academy where she can be isolated for the most part. She hadn't wanted to worry the girls, hadn't wanted to break down in front of them, so she's been here for hours now. The blankets are ruffled under her body but she hasn't moved in a long time . Not even to turn on a light or tuck herself under the covers. There's a tight point of pain in her chest, right over her heart, that's making each breath feel impossible. The air gasps through her parted lips in ragged, uneven pants.

It's been a long time. The sun had been up when she'd first staggered up the stairs and into the quiet of her bedroom, closing the door behind herself to collapse onto her mattress. It feels like it's been years, like the time has stretched out beyond all recognition and she wonders, for a brief moment of blind panic, if the world beyond her door, beyond her window, has shifted. If he's  _here_ too, and she's out of time.

_Michael._

The son of Satan. The boy who'd brought the world to its knees -- left her Coven broken and her girls scattered and lost in oblivion; left the Earth a scorched, barren disaster beyond all repair; left  _her_ bleeding and dead on a hard floor without a moment's notice.

She sucks in a breath and her chest throbs. In, out. In, out. She can barely even manage it.

Zoe had drifted in earlier, voice soft as she'd knocked on the door before answering. 

"Cordelia?" she'd asked, but Cordelia had turned to face the other wall, away from her. 

With her eyes closed, the image of Zoe lying bleeding, with a hole in her head, on the floor downstairs -- staining that immaculate, grey hardwood -- flashed into her mind and she'd bitten her lip to keep from crying out. Because that wasn't  _this_ Zoe. Not  _her_ Zoe.  _Her_ Zoe is alive, was standing right there beside her bed, asking about dinner, asking if she was okay.

Cordelia hadn't been able to answer. Time had seemed to speed up the moment Zoe even came in and, before she could put the words together in her mind -- a good enough answer -- Zoe had been saying, "Let me know if you need anything," in a quiet voice and drifting back out of the room. 

Zoe is probably downstairs now, with the girls, with  _Queenie._ Or else she's in bed, asleep. Asleep and safe. 

In, out.

It had been a normal day. A normal afternoon. She’d thought nothing of it when Mallory had asked to speak to her in her office after classes had been dismissed. But then she’d started talking and it was all so hard to believe. She doesn’t know if she believes her.

A knock at the door makes her jump, makes her gasp, has her eyes flying open to look at the ceiling in wonder at who it could be. Zoe, perhaps, checking in again. Or maybe Queenie, sent to try her own hand at figuring out exactly what it is that happened. Perhaps Mallory, come to apologize or to say that the entire thing had been a cruel attempt at a joke.

_Just kidding! Did I getcha?_

But, no. Mallory hadn't been able to look at her when she'd shared the story. She had cried silently, with shaking shoulders, and she had given as many details as she could, but she hadn't been able to look at Cordelia. Not directly. Not even when Cordelia had excused herself. Not even then.

She was telling the truth. That much was hauntingly evident. And Cordelia knows that it would be so much easier if she had been lying.

"Cordelia?"

There's a voice in her ear that makes her jump. It's Misty, but she hadn't heard her actually come in or cross the room to her bed. Now she's standing beside her, towering over her. Cordelia can just see her out of her peripheral vision, but she doesn't look at her.  _Can't._ Imagines a young man with malice in his eyes standing in front of Misty in some nondescript darkness. Whispering,  _Come with me,_ and how scared that Misty must have been -- to have been saved from Hell by the son of Satan himself. No Nan with a warm hand to guide her home.

There are cold fingers on Cordelia's wrist, probing at the defined bone there. Misty's thumb flattens over it and smooths, fingers squeezing her softly. "What happened?"

She sounds so concerned, so worried, that Cordelia feels guilty. Feels tired. Feels...too _much_. Her girls flash by in the darkness of her eyelids as she squeezes them closed against the tears. Dead Zoe, dead Queenie, dead  _Misty._ Scattered bodies, small and broken, and dark red blood in rivulets flowing down the cracks of the floorboard to where she's standing, helpless. Staring at them. Dead.

A sob wrenches her way through her throat and then there are hands coaxing her upright, pulling her in. She sits up and slumps sideways into Misty’s embrace, tucks her head into the other woman’s shoulder, against the flowery scent of her hair, and lets herself cry.

Misty doesn’t shush her or make any noise. She just rubs small circles on Cordelia’s back and waits. Rocks her a little. She doesn’t let go. That’s what matters.

"You ever go swimmin' and hold your breath underwater too long?" Misty asks, and it's such an odd question that Cordelia is certain, if only for a second, that she's heard her wrong. 

But when Misty lingers on it without amending, it's clear that she's said exactly what she meant. She nods, though she can't remember ever having done exactly that, against Misty's shoulder, her nose nudging against the soft skin of Misty's neck with the motion and she bites her lip, waiting.

"Right," Misty whispers. "So you're down there and you're so far from the surface and your lungs are screaming, but it's like you can't move fast enough? And you're worried you ain't ever gonna get there in time. That you're just gonna drown any second because you can't swim good enough or something."

Another nod. Cordelia can't remember the last time she even  _swam_ for fun or any other reason, but she understands the meaning enough to agree. Understands where she's coming from.

Misty's hand stills on Cordelia's back. "That's what it felt like that first week back here," she says, and her voice is steadier than Cordelia's would be under the same circumstances. Her fingers tap out a rhythm between Cordelia's shoulder blades and then they fall still. "I'd wake up and forget where I was...think I was still...in that place. That coming back here was a dream. And I..." She clears her throat, like she's struggling to get this out now and Cordelia grips the fabric of the shawl around Misty's shoulders in tight fists, pulling her closer. "I'd get up and I'd rush downstairs just to see you, to remind myself. I...I put these pictures up, y'know. In my shack. So that I could...I could just roll over and see 'em and know you guys are real. That I ain't dreamt it all up or somethin'."

She pauses, her hand stilling on Cordelia’s back, right between her shoulder blades. There are lips pressed into the mess of Cordelia’s hair that Misty can reach, and she leans into the touch, feels the tears still for the moment.

“It always feels like that, when I see you,” Misty whispers into her hair. “Like I’m finally gettin’ enough air.”

Cordelia knows that feeling exactly, and she longs to say so, but she can’t find her voice. All she can do is pull Misty closer and think about it -- that world Mallory described. A world where Misty had been gone for so much longer. For three years. Imagines missing her that long. Imagines never coming back from that.

Cordelia had died there. Sacrificed herself and she thinks she can feel the ache from that, her energy sapping away. Some sort of phantom limb pain from a death she’ll never experience now. Her chest aches.

Misty coaxes her back onto the pillows after a little while, and curls her body around Cordelia’s. She doesn’t let go. Cordelia wonders if they’d done this in the other world -- the one that ended. She hopes that she hadn’t wasted any time in that life, that she’d taken Misty into her arms and kissed her and loved her and let herself be _happy_ in those final years. She’d like to think that she hadn’t wasted a minute of their time together.

There’s a kiss pressed to her shoulder and Cordelia presses back into Misty, covers the arms around her waist with her hands. She wants to tell Misty how much she missed her when she was gone. She wants to tell her everything, all those things she’s been afraid of saying aloud. But it’s quiet now and Misty’s breath is coming out in puffs that ruffle through her hair and she never thought she’d have this but she does.

She _does._

Eventually, Cordelia falls asleep and when she wakes up the next morning, Misty is still there, sleeping quietly beside her.

Later, Zoe is quiet in the kitchen, sipping from a mug and watching her Supreme with silent, worried eyes. She doesn't ask. She knows enough not to and Cordelia squeezes the girl's shoulder as she reaches around her to grab the loaf of bread from the counter. Twice. Zoe covers Cordelia's hand with her own for a second, and then they pull away. 

She doesn't tell her. She won't tell Queenie either. She needs time to consider, needs time to adjust. But Zoe will give her that, she knows. Always.

When Cordelia sets a plate of perfectly browned toast in front of Misty, sitting across from her at the table with her own, Misty looks up and smiles at her -- clean, white teeth and blonde eyelashes fluttering over blue eyes. 

Like getting enough air, Cordelia realizes. That ache in her chest loosens.

 

.

_June._

.

 

It’s hot in Misty’s shack. Cordelia makes a mental note to get an air conditioning unit in it sometime. Something that won’t blow the generator running out back. For now, Misty walks through the doors and crosses the room to the window, moving some of the drapes and opening it up to the wet, swampy air outside as if that’s going to help anything. Maybe it will. Cordelia isn’t sure.

This is the first time that she’s been in this shack with Misty herself. It’s different, to say the least. Zoe had been the one to show Cordelia to this place after Misty had gone, almost two years ago. It had been aching then, to be surrounded by Misty’s things and know that she was gone -- there’d been no hope then, no chance of her returning in Cordelia’s mind or heart and she’d been grieving at the time. She hadn’t ever really stopped. Sometimes, she thinks, she’s still grieving in some ways.

That first day she’d come here, Zoe standing in the doorway behind her, Cordelia had looked around and taken inventory of all of Misty’s possessions. The records stacked up on the table in the corner, the cassette tapes beside them. There were books opened haphazardly on a good deal of surfaces and some clothes draped over beaten-up furniture. Her bed was unmade and the drapes smelled like the air outside, the mud and the water and the _nature._

She had spent basically every Saturday straightening up, organizing the books and the records and changing the sheets. She’d dusted shelves and rearranged furniture and then she’d tackled bigger projects like reviving her garden out front or hiring a contractor to add a working bathroom on the Coven’s dime.

What it looks like now: Misty’s touch has gone back into every piece of it. The books are still organized but some of the records are out, the sheets rumpled from the last time she’d stayed the night. There are a few pictures taped up to the wall -- her and Zoe with their arms around each other, laughing; Queenie flipping off the camera; Kyle pressing a sloppy kiss to her cheek; Mallory smiling softly with her hair fanned out on the grass behind her. All of these are displayed under a poster of Stevie Nicks, posed with her shawl, by Misty’s bed.

As Misty picks up various clothes from the floor, trying to tidy up a bit, Cordelia looks them over, unable to fight the smile on her face at the sight of them. Misty is here now. She’s back. She’s happy. She’s _healing._

There’s another picture in a silver frame that still has the price sticker stuck to the corner on the bedside table. Cordelia picks it up to get a better look at it. It’s her, cut out of what she assumes must have been the newspaper article from over a year ago, when she’d first made the Coven public. It’s been folded so that the headline can’t be seen and it’s taped onto black piece of paper so that it’s centered in the frame.

“Found that, didya?”

She turns to find Misty standing a few feet away, smiling timidly. “How did you find this article?”

She doesn’t say: _It was published two weeks after you_ **_died_ ** _._

“Zoe had a couple extra copies. Said she bought out a whole newsstand. It’s a good picture. I didn’t have any others of you.”

The look they share lingers for a second or two too long.

“Oh, right,” Cordelia says. “Remind me to give you a better one when we’re home sometime.”

Misty grins. “Maybe we can take one of the two of us or something.”

“I’d like that.”

“Me too.”

There’s a knock at the door behind them, making them both jump, and then Madison’s voice comes ringing through the door.

“Are you two done making out in there or do I have to stand in alligator shit the rest of the night?”

Misty rolls her eyes and turns, crossing the few feet to the door so she can wrench it open. “Keep cryin’ and I’ll drag you back to the school. How’s about that?”

Madison at least has the decency to look properly chastised in the few seconds before she rolls her eyes. “Whatever, swampy. I’d like to see you try.”

She’d arrived with Nan just that morning, looking nearly as haggard as Misty had when she’d returned, and even though Cordelia had known to expect something like that again, she still hadn’t been prepared. Madison had let her hug her, had let Zoe and Queenie do the same while Kyle was exiled to the backyard temporarily. Cordelia had held Nan for a while, but had let her go. She’s learning, she thinks. She’s trying to understand.

Mallory had stood behind them all and watched the reunion, as if it hadn’t all been because of her. As if it wasn’t her that Papa Legba felt he owed another favor to. Cordelia has been trying to get used to this in the weeks since Mallory told her. There are still so many things to figure out, to question. Things like Mallory’s status as the next Supreme (or second current Supreme) and what this means for her life span. She still feels fine, perfect. Powerful. She doesn’t feel like she’s begun to fade or anything like that, but she’s still wary. Worried. Like this life could finally slip through her fingers now that she has all of the information.

(There are other things, too, like what to do about Kyle now that they’re all aware of the events that led to Madison’s death -- because Cordelia is so _sick_ and _tired_ of losing people. She still has nightmares where she’s standing there, helpless, as she watches Myrtle burn. She can’t do it again. They’ve all lost enough.)

But they’re taking it one step at a time. Easy things first. Madison’s reintegration into the world of the living, for one. They have time for her to heal, places for her to be alone, and Misty had offered her the seclusion of her shack while Madison begins to piece herself back together.

“Miss Cordelia added plumbing at least, so your highness don’t have to go in the woods,” Misty tells her and Madison makes a vague expression of disgust at the mention. “Just...don’t touch my shit.”

“Scout’s honor,” Madison says, raising the fingers of her right hand in the Boy Scout salute. Her eyes flit to Cordelia who reaches out and grapples for her wrist.

Cordelia had missed her -- every part of her -- when she’d been gone. But Madison is back now. She’s safe. Again.

“Please let me know if you need anything at all, okay?”

Part of her expects the offer to be met with some sort of dirty look or complaint, but Madison’s expression is soft. “I will,” she whispers.

On their way out, she lets Cordelia draw her into another hug and she even thanks Misty for sharing her safe haven in an uncharacteristically soft voice.

“What d’ya think the odds are of her burning the place down with one of those cancer sticks she’s always smokin’?” Misty asks, as they make their way down the dirt path to the main road where Cordelia’s car is parked. She has her shawl wrapped around her arms and one of the tassels at the bottom brushes against Cordelia’s leg through her pantyhose, tickling her.

“One in ten,” Cordelia answers and Misty’s laugh blends in with the birds singing in the trees.

That night the month before when everything had felt so lost, so hopeless, so unsure, might as well have happened in another year. Madison is alive again. Her girls are safe. And Mallory is here. She’d saved the world in this timeline, even if the other one had been beyond saving. Cordelia doesn’t think she can ask for anything more.

Misty is beside her and when their hands brush this time -- like they have so often since she got back -- Cordelia catches her fingers and holds on. The smile Misty gives her tightens something in her chest and they don’t let go until they get to the car.

It’s a beautiful day.

 

.

_July._

.

 

The summer is easier somehow. Most of the girls return home for the break in classes, taking the time off like normal school girls do. A few of them linger in the early weeks, but by mid-July it’s only the council and Madison and Mallory left. Cordelia has been spending more and more time with Mallory, honing her skills, figuring out the breadth and depth of her talent.

As far as they’ve been able to find, she possesses the same raw ability that Cordelia had been gifted with the moment Fiona had died. The only place where they differ is in Cordelia’s years of training and in the fact that the Supreme before her has not died yet. They’ll have to figure this out -- what they can do -- but for now they’ve agreed to keep it between themselves.

There is no reason for Zoe or Queenie to be informed about the manner in which they’d died in another world that doesn’t exist anymore. There’s no point in telling Madison of her brave sacrifice and subsequent death at the hands of the Antichrist. While Cordelia itches to tell them all the full truth, she knows it would do no more than clear her conscience, guilty from keeping it from them in the first place. Otherwise, it would only serve to add suffering to their lives.

Kyle is put on watch. It had been Madison who had, in a rare moment of mercy, taken the blame of her death off his hands. Cordelia had been grateful not to have to burn another helpless soul at the stake, and to not make Zoe’s life miserable. It’s so hard to come back from the death of the one you love. Cordelia is still learning where to begin and hers came back to her.

It’s quiet after, in the wake of coming to terms with everything new. Cordelia is still trying to learn how to roll with the punches. She thinks she’s getting better. Imagines a day when she can look at Misty without something aching deep in her chest. Wonders if it will ever go away -- if she even wants it to.

She’s lying, half-asleep, with her head on her desk. It’s late and she’s tired. She hasn’t been sleeping well, despite her coming to terms. There are too many things on her mind. And her exhaustion creeps in by the time dinner rolls around. When she’s trying to get some work done before bed, to keep herself busy, is when it becomes impossible to ignore.

Someone knocks on the doorframe of her office and she picks her head up, blinking blearily at the sight of Misty standing there. She’s in a dark dress and the buckle of the belt around her waist shimmers in the big, Louisiana moon shining in through the window behind Cordelia’s desk. Her skirt sways around her feet and she smiles when Cordelia pulls some of her hair out of her mouth before rubbing her fingers against the crease on her forehead from the stack of paper she’d had it rested against.

“You’re gonna get a cramp or somethin’ from sleeping there, Miss Cordelia,” Misty admonishes.

She says it like nothing’s changed. Like Cordelia hadn’t just sat her down earlier that morning to tell her everything Mallory had told her two months before -- all those things that have been torturing her since.

Misty had been the only one she’d told. Her and Mallory had discussed it, agreed to it. She’d deserved to know, Cordelia had thought. But more than that: she wasn’t certain she could keep it from Misty in the first place. Wasn’t sure she had it inside herself to even try.

The reaction had been different than she’d expected. Quieter. Misty had sat there for a long time, on the chair across from Cordelia’s desk that she’d claimed as her own whenever they spent time in that room together. She had gripped the wooden armrest for a few seconds, breathing softly, and then she’d excused herself and left the house entirely. To clear her head, Cordelia supposed. But she hadn’t returned for dinner.

This is the first time she’s seen her in hours and there’s none of the sadness that Cordelia knows she’d felt when she’d found out on Misty’s face. Instead there’s something different, something calmer. Accepting, almost.

The lamp is flicked on still, casting light over parts of the room, but Misty remains in the shadows. Her hair looks different in the dark, paler. It falls around her shoulders in soft waves that Cordelia longs to sink her fingers into.

“You’re back,” Cordelia whispers, like she hadn’t expected Misty to ever return after finding out what she had.

Misty nods. “Went for a walk. Cleared my head.”

Cordelia clears her suddenly dry throat. “Are you okay?” she asks.

With a shrug, Misty crosses her arms and leans against the door jamb. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to be okay with all that, y’know? Like...it’s a lot to process and all, but I just…” She looks away, eyes fixed on the bookshelf in the corner of the room.

There’s a framed picture on the middle shelf from the beginning of the year, all the girls lined up on the front lawn in front of the Academy, smiling for the camera that Kyle had been holding from his perch on a ladder tall enough to fit them all in the frame. It’s a good picture. When they take it this coming year, in September, Misty will be in the back with Zoe and Queenie. Madison will be there, too.

Because they’re both here. Alive. Even if Cordelia can’t quite wrap her head or her heart around it.

“It didn’t happen to us,” Misty says finally, and Cordelia doesn’t understand for a moment, but she continues. “Not this us, at least.” She waves a hand between the two of them. “I...we’re here now, right? You and me. We’re here and Mallory saved the world and we’ve got time. I’m not trying to burn a gift horse on the bridge.”

Cordelia smiles, despite herself, something lifting in the deep cavern of her chest. She pushes her chair back and gets to her feet, stepping around her desk to stand in front of Misty.

“That’s not the phrase,” she says, and Misty frowns in confusion. “It’s…‘look a gift horse in the mouth’.”

Misty’s cheeks flush pink at the correction. “Right,” she says. “Stupid.”

Cordelia shakes her head. “It was cute.”

They’ve been getting better at this -- at touching whatever this thing is between them that’s growing. Touching it and acknowledging it and not running away immediately afterwards. Cordelia is learning that maybe Misty wants this, too. That maybe getting what she wants for once is something she’s worthy of.

Even now, Misty doesn’t shy away from the eye contact. No, she reaches out and finds Cordelia’s hand, links them together in a soft touch and doesn’t let go. Cordelia brushes her thumb across one of the cool, metal rings Misty is wearing and looks down to where they’re joined, touching, like she can’t believe the sight of it. Maybe she can’t, even if she’s trying to.

Misty is beautiful -- bright, blue eyes and soft pink lips and her blonde curls in the darkness. Cordelia doesn’t know how she’ll ever look away. Imagines staying right there, in this moment, forever.

“You’re right,” she says finally.

“What about?” Misty drawls, tilting her head curiously.

“What you said. You’re right. We...We’re alive here. Together. I don’t want us to waste anymore time.”

There’s moonlit eagerness in Misty’s eyes, shining out from behind the blue, and her lips are parted just so as she breathes through them, like she’s trying to figure out exactly what it is that Cordelia means by that. As if it isn’t obvious -- as if this isn’t exactly what was always going to happen. It was just a matter of time, really.

Her fingers grip Cordelia’s loosely at their sides and she shivers when Cordelia’s other hand slides up her bare shoulder, fingering over the strap of her dress. Cordelia leans forward and up, bracing herself on the other woman and she can see the exact moment that it comes together in Misty’s mind -- what’s about to happen.

Some part of Cordelia is waiting for something to give, to break. She’s waiting for what they’re heading towards to fade away. For rejection or something else she’s become so accustomed to. There are side effects that linger when you’re not used to getting what you want.

But she thinks Misty must be right there with her, even when the other woman’s eyes flutter closed, even as she leans forward. Cordelia leans forward too, but she keeps her eyes open just to make sure she hits her mark -- just to make sure she’s not imagining it.

She isn’t. Misty’s lips meet hers. It’s still for a long moment. Quiet. She can hear cars rumbling past the house outside and the crickets in the leaves. The distant hum of the air conditioning as it clicks on. Misty’s breath puffs out against Cordelia’s cheek from her nose and then she shifts, her free hand reaching out to rest on Cordelia’s waist, to draw her closer and --

It gives. Whatever stalemate they’d built together since Misty’s return, whatever walls were there, crumble to dust almost immediately.

Cordelia threads her fingers into Misty’s curls, drawing her impossibly closer, and Misty’s hands grip her hips as she sighs into Cordelia’s parted lips and she doesn’t know how she waited this long.

This is it: what they should have been doing all along.

All her life, she’d been told love was easy -- _should_ be easy. But she’d never thought it could be true before.

Now, she thinks it’s the easiest thing she’s ever known.

They don’t part. Like they’ve waited too long and can’t imagine ever breaking away from one another. For a moment, Cordelia imagines pressing Misty into her desk and finishing this right there, but this isn’t the kind of thing she wants to rush.

So, she mumbles, “Bedroom,” into Misty’s mouth and Misty pulls away for a second to nod in agreement before they’re kissing again.

They stumble from Cordelia’s office to the main hallway, to the stairs, and Misty’s tongue is dipping past her lips, tracing the backs of her teeth and grazing the roof of her mouth like she’s trying to make a map or memorize it or something. Cordelia winds up being pressed into the banister for a moment because neither of them can stop. Vaguely, she hears herself make some sort of sighing, whimpering noise, but she can’t even bring herself to be embarrassed. She’s far too busy gripping the loose material of Misty’s dress around her hips to pull her closer.

The stairs are nearly impossible to climb with Misty’s teeth grazing her pulse point, her fingers tugging Cordelia’s blouse from the waist of her skirt, but they manage it somehow. They’re lucky, maybe, that it’s so late that no one else is awake to hear the Cordelia’s bedroom door open and then slam closed when she pushes Misty back into it, fingers trailing down her neck to brush against her collarbone, kissing her again.

“Tell me you want this,” Cordelia whispers into Misty’s ear as they make their way back to her bed.

It’s not a command. Not even close. It’s a request. A _please-please-want-this-as-much-as-I-do._

Her knees hit her mattress and then Misty is pushing her gently backwards so that she’s sprawled out on it. She works her way back a little and then Misty straddles her lap, skirt pooling around Cordelia’s hips where they’re touching. Their eyes meet in the dark and the light from the street lamps outside, coming through the windows, is all they have to go by, but it’s enough. More than. Cordelia doesn’t think she’s ever been able to see so clearly before.

Misty reaches down and cups Cordelia’s jaw, drawing her up to bring their lips together briefly, and Cordelia’s arms wrap around her waist, pulling her down onto her lap. “I don’t think I ever wanted anything more, Delia,” Misty whispers and then they’re kissing again.

It goes on for a long time, slow and steady despite the fire that’s building. Misty unbuttons Cordelia’s blouse and tosses it to the floor, her hands exploring the newly exposed skin curiously, eagerly. Things pick up after that.

Cordelia kisses down Misty’s neck as she works the dress down her shoulders. Misty shifts on top of her to aid in its slow removal. When it’s on the floor with Cordelia’s shirt, it’s impossible for her to look away. Misty is pale, soft skin in any light, but it’s particularly blinding like this. There’s a chance Cordelia will never recover.

“Why do you look at me like that?” Misty asks, barely a murmur. Her thumb traces the line of Cordelia’s jaw and Cordelia turns her head to kiss it before it retreats.

“I can’t stop missing you,” she confesses, surprised at the raw honesty in the words. “I don’t know how.”

What she means is this:

She has seen more people leave her than she ever truly needed to, but she hadn’t had her sight when Misty dissolved in her arms. She hadn’t even been able to see her go. And some part of her had never truly believed that she was gone, that she wasn’t coming back, until she’d been in her arms again.

The irony of the whole thing:

She has never missed Misty more than she does right now, sitting on her lap, warm skin under the flat of Cordelia’s palms as she slides them up her ribcage.

It’s a vast and yawning _lack_ inside of her chest -- as if it’s the yearning itself that will do her in. She wonders if it will ever go away.

“I’m right here, Miss Delia,” is Misty’s simple answer, breathed across Cordelia’s lips as she leans in again, eyes fluttering closed. “I’m not going anywhere. You have to know that.”

Her lips are hungry against Cordelia’s. The kiss goes on for a long time, igniting the fire in the pit of Cordelia’s stomach again. Her fingers spread and stretch across Misty’s back, toying with the strap of her bra and unclasping it, sliding it from her shoulders, touching more skin -- as much as she can.

“I think I do,” Cordelia says and Misty pushes her back onto the pillows, covers her body with her own. “I think I do know.”

She knows, and it's a learning experience, touching Misty's body. Something that she's never quite done before, or even allowed herself to dream about for very long since Misty came back. There are soft curves and slim fingers and Misty smells like the garden or something vaguely floral. Something that Cordelia thinks followed her nightmares for months when Misty fell apart in her arms so long ago. 

It's like putting her back together, holding her this close now. Figuring out a way to make herself forget what it felt like to have this woman in her arms and be left grasping at dust and air in a matter of seconds. Misty is warm and soft and she gasps into Cordelia's mouth when Cordelia's teeth graze against the soft of her lower lip. Something new blossoms deep in Cordelia's chest when Misty's fingers slip down her body, settle between her thighs. It grows and it stretches and it shines light into the darkest parts of her, scaring away the shadows. 

Misty is  _here_. She's in her arms and Cordelia can  _see_ her and neither of them has any other place to be.

Cordelia knows. Really, she does. 

.

_August._

.

 

“How are you?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You just seem happier, that’s all.”

“I am.”

“That’s good, you know. You’re allowed to be happy. Hell, I think most people _want_ to be.”

“What makes you think I don’t want to be?”

Cordelia swivels her head and looks over at Zoe, sitting across the metal picnic table from her. She’d been watching Madison and Misty, talking softly in the line of the ice cream stand just a few feet away. It’s hot, but the umbrella above them is providing enough shade for the moment that Cordelia doesn’t quite mind the way her hair is curling at the base of her neck in the humidity.

It had been Misty’s idea to drag them out for one last afternoon before the rest of the girls come back for the start of classes. The ice cream itself had been Madison’s idea. She’s been living in the house with the rest of them for over a month now, and she’s still not talking to Kyle in more than one-word sentences, but she’s better now. Happier. Everything keeps getting better.

The old Madison certainly would have never suggested such a juvenile activity as going to get ice cream with them. That much is certain.

Mallory had stayed back with Queenie to rest in the air conditioning, both of them citing ‘not wanting to melt’ as their reason. Cordelia can’t say that she blames them now that she’s cooking under the hot, summer sun.

Zoe shrugs. “I didn’t say that. I just think you got used to being unhappy. That’s all.”

She has a point. Cordelia won’t tell her that, but she does. Things are simple, even though they have every reason not to be. There should be complications, things made harder by everything that Mallory told her, everything that happened in some other world that doesn’t exist anymore. But the fact of the matter is that Cordelia isn’t scared anymore.

Not of anything.

She doesn’t think she could bring herself to be if she tried.

She turns her head to look at the line again and Misty catches her looking and sends her a happy wave. Madison follows her line of sight and rolls her eyes, says something that has Misty elbowing her in the ribs and laughing.

“You guys are good for each other,” is what Zoe says next and, this time, when Cordelia looks at her, there isn’t a hint of humor in her eyes. She’s serious.

Cordelia opens her mouth to protest, to ask what Zoe means, because her and Misty have been quiet, even if they haven’t been exactly discreet. They haven’t told anyone. Even though Misty spends most nights in Cordelia’s room sleeping beside her or else pointedly _not-_ sleeping. She blushes at the thought, the memory of Misty waking her up this morning with soft kisses that had turned hungry in the early morning sunshine.

“Don’t,” Zoe warns, rolling her eyes. “My room is right next to yours. The walls are thin and you guys aren’t subtle.”

Cordelia coughs and looks away, thankful for the sunglasses covering her eyes so that she doesn’t have to look at Zoe directly.

“But...she’s been through Hell. Literally.” At the mention, Zoe frowns. “You too. You’re allowed to be happy.”

It sounds like a foreign concept, even if she understands it to be true.

Zoe reaches out and covers one of Cordelia’s hands with her own. She squeezes twice and smiles and Cordelia can’t help but smile back.

“Thank you.”

“Anything for my Supreme,” Zoe jokes and they’re still laughing at the unfortunate phrasing timed with her wink when Madison and Misty come back with their orders.

Madison hands Zoe her cone and sits beside her, the two of them falling into an easy conversation while Misty hands off Cordelia’s order to her.

“Sorry it’s meltin’ so quick,” Misty says, and there’s chocolate ice cream dribbling down her elbow. She sits down on the bench and Cordelia grabs a napkin from the dispenser on the table, wiping it off of Misty’s arm for her. “Thanks.”

“You’re going to be sticky,” she says and Misty grins.

“Used to that around you.”

Cordelia crinkles her nose. “Inappropriate.”

“You weren’t complainin’ last night.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

She’s smiling though and now her ice cream is dripping down her own arm. She wipes it off and starts working on it to keep it from melting any further. By the time she’s finished, Misty has strawberry ice cream dripping down her chin and Cordelia reaches out to cup her jaw, bringing her closer and licking it off before kissing her.

Never in her life has she done something like that before. It’s so unlike her that she nearly surprises herself, but it’s worth it for the way Misty laughs and kisses her again, and it’s still worth it when Madison says, “Gross. Keep it in your pants, ladies,” across the table without an ounce of malice in her tone.

She thinks it will always be worth it.

 

.

_September._

.

 

“How crooked is that?” Misty asks, arms stretched up above her head as she grips the edges of the poster frame.

Cordelia squints and tilts her head from her spot a few feet back. “I think that’s good.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Cause if it’s crooked, I’m blamin’ you.”

“I’d expect no less.”

Misty sticks her tongue out at her and then presses the poster frame, the Command Strips on the back, to the wall beside her side of the bed. She steps back and looks up at it, the poster from her shack that Cordelia had straightened and dusted off all those days that she’d been gone.

“See?” Cordelia says. “It’s fine.” She steps forward and wraps her arm around Misty’s waist, drawing her in.

“Yeah, you’re right. You always are.”

“Thank you for acknowledging that.”

It’s been six weeks. Six weeks of shared kisses behind closed doors -- for the most part -- and holding hands under the dinner table. Six weeks of Misty sneaking out of the room she shares with Queenie and into Cordelia’s bed at night. Six weeks and Cordelia has yet to wake up from this dream that her life has become.

It’s been two weeks since her conversation with Zoe, since the two of them got more bold, more daring. Two weeks since they’d had that conversation about what this meant to them, naked under the thin sheets of Cordelia’s bed.

Misty had said, “I don’t think I’ll ever want someone else the way I want you,” when Cordelia had asked what she wanted this to be.

Cordelia had said, “I love you,” even though she’d meant to be saving that for another time. She’d been thinking it for so long, by then, though, that it just slipped out. She couldn’t take it back though. Not even if she wanted to.

Misty had been quiet for a long time, her heart drumming frantically in her chest under Cordelia’s cheek. Her arms had tightened around Cordelia, fingers pressing into her spine, and then she’d taken a shuddering breath.

And then, “I love you, too.”

Now, here they are moving Misty’s meager belongings into Cordelia’s room for good. Her clothes are hung in Cordelia’s closet again and the two pairs of shoes she owns are on the shoe rack below them. There’s a shawl draped over the edge of her vanity and her books piled on the table on her side of the bed. And now this: a poster of Stevie Nicks hanging on the wall. Her pictures of the others are taped up underneath it already and the silver frame from her shack is on her side of the bed, but the article picture has been replaced inside of it.

It’s a new one, taken by Queenie when they’d gone out to a Jazz Club just the weekend before. In it, Misty is sitting in one of the chairs at their table and Cordelia is perched on her lap, her arm wrapped around Misty’s neck to keep herself steady. Misty is laughing at something that Zoe had just said and Cordelia is looking down at her, smiling at her rather than at Queenie’s phone, pulled out to snap the picture.

It’s perfect. All of it. Cordelia can hardly believe that this is her life.

“You sure you wanna invite me into your space? I’m like a vampire, y’know. Once I’m here, I’m here to stay,” Misty jokes. She turns her head and presses a kiss to Cordelia’s forehead, wrapping an arm around the other woman’s shoulders and squeezing her closer.

“You’re thinking of bed bugs,” Cordelia whispers into her collarbone and Misty’s laugh vibrates against her cheek.

“Maybe.”

“Definitely.”

“Either way…”

Cordelia lifts her head from Misty’s shoulder and looks at her, hard. Doesn’t look away. “I’m positive,” she says.

Misty nods, and then: “You didn’t do it that time.”

And Cordelia hadn’t ever planned to look at Misty in that way in the first place, any of the times previous. It wasn’t as if she’d been aware she was even doing it before Misty brought it up that first time, all those months ago.

“Stop missing me or somethin’?”

Cordelia considers this, mulls it over. The answer is _no_ , of course. She will always miss her. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get used to having her again, as long as she lives. But that’s hard to say for some reason. The words refuse to line up in the right order in her mind.

Finally, she says, “Never,” and kisses Misty for a long time.

Long enough for Misty to believe her.

 

.

_October._

.

 

There are things she never expected:

Madison and Zoe laughing in the kitchen as they help Kyle make dinner; Queenie comforting a new student who misses her family just two weeks into the separation, hugging her and holding her and reassuring her so firmly that the girl isn’t sad for long; the feeling of belonging in her own skin, of _becoming_ more each day.

She never expected another Supreme, either. This young girl with her easy smile and her kind eyes and the way she talks so easily with Cordelia about the future, like it’s an absolute certainty. Cordelia never used to be one for hope, but she’s starting to think that’s changing.

“There’s a girl in Los Angeles from... _before._ She...she might not be showing her powers yet,” Mallory says one night as she walks from Cordelia’s office with her towards the stairway.

Her voice is pitched low, fervent. She’s so careful how she brings up the past -- all those things that changed. So considerate.

“And you want to go get her,” Cordelia finishes, causing Mallory to look away. “If she’s not aware of her powers, she might be wary of you.”

It’s a warning, but not a solid one. There’d been a name dropped more than once all those months ago when Mallory had shared her story. _Coco._ The way Mallory had said it had been different from any other name mentioned in the story. Closer to how Cordelia heard herself say Misty’s name. She thinks she understands.

“You’re right,” Mallory says softly. “It’s a bad idea.”

“I didn’t say that,” Cordelia cuts in. “You just have to be careful in how you approach it.”

Mallory’s eyes grow wide with surprise. “Really?”

“Really,” Cordelia says. “We’ll find her.”

_We._

Because they’ll do it together, of course.

Mallory’s hand finds hers and Cordelia squeezes it, smiles softly. In the kitchen, Madison squeals and Zoe is laughing. Upstairs, one of the girls is playing music faintly and she can hear others talking. There’s a study group set up in the living room, a few of her students spread out in front of old books with cracked spines and laughing, talking to one another.

Outside the sun is setting, and the light comes in through the glass on either side of the front door. Mallory lets go of her hand.

“I think I know where to start looking for her,” she says and Cordelia nods.

“If you can find where she is, we’ll go and get her. I promise.”

They all have their strengths, but Mallory’s is _this_ : never giving up.

Zoe engages, Queenie jokes, Madison snarks, Misty _loves_ , and Cordelia leads. Encourages. All of it comes together in a jagged overlap. It’s the best this Coven has ever functioned.

Mallory lets go of her hand and goes to join the girls in the living room, to help them. She’s taken on more responsibility since she’d informed Cordelia of who she really was. Soon, Cordelia will have her start teaching some classes of her own. But not yet.

Dinner is being finished in the kitchen. Kyle is walking the dishes from the counter to the dining room, giving Madison a wide berth as he does. They don’t look at each other, but it’s getting better, easier. Zoe hardly ever leaves them alone together.

“Smells good,” Queenie says from behind Cordelia, coming around her to join them.

“It better,” Madison retorts. “Took us hours.”

Zoe rolls her eyes. “Hardly.”

Madison elbows her.

“Girls,” Cordelia scolds softly, but she hardly means it.

Zoe smiles at her and Madison tries to pretend her own smile is a frown.

The back door opens and then Misty is there, in the doorway, just like she was that night back in November, right after she’d gotten back. She’s barefoot again, wet feet from hosing herself off and blonde curls frizzing from the lingering humidity. Madison yells at her to dry off before coming in, but Misty ignores her the moment she sees Cordelia standing there.

“Hey, sugar,” she greets and she pads across the floor, leaving wet footprints in her wake.

Madison huffs and Zoe quickly redirects her to helping Kyle set the table. Queenie goes to call the girls to dinner.

“Hey, yourself,” Cordelia returns just as Misty reaches her.

She’d left the back door open and the evening light coming in behind gives her a heavenly sort of glow. Cordelia lifts her hand and curls a finger in her hair.

Misty grins and then kisses her, soft and linger. “Missed you,” she mumbles against Cordelia’s lips and that ache is gone, that _lack_. Instead, there’s something else -- warm and full.

It’s Misty, she knows. It always will be.

Cordelia smiles, can’t help it, doesn’t know how to stop. She says, “I missed you, too.”

 

...

 

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Until We Get There" by Lucius. beginning quote from "The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton.
> 
> we did it, guys. like...they didn't kiss or anything but we got closer than i thought we would, tbh. thanks for reading! leave your thoughts if you like, or catch me disassociating on [tumblr](http://housewithoutwindows.tumblr.com/).


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